The idea for An American in Paris came to producer Arthur Freed when he attended a concert of George Gershwin's An American in Paris, which is best described as a tone poem as opposed to a collection of songs. Freed liked the title and from that he built a musical with Gershwin tunes after months of negotiations with brother Ira Gershwin, estate trustees, and two different music publishers.

The concept of an extended, extravagant dance sequence was nothing new in the film musical genre and had been utilized in various forms in Yolanda and the Thief (1945) and Ziegfeld Follies (1946). But nothing on the scale of Freed's grand finale in An American in Paris - presented in the styles of several great French painters - had ever been attempted before at MGM.

The unexpected box office success of Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell's Technicolor dance fantasy, The Red Shoes (1948), indicated that audiences might respond quite enthusiastically to a 17-minute climactic ballet sequence.

The MGM brass were hesitant at first to throw nearly a half a million dollars into filming one musical number, the 17-minute ballet. Fortunately, studio mogul Louis B. Mayer (soon to be replaced by a new regime of studio management under Dore Schary) played a key role in green-lighting the production, regardless of its costs.

by Scott McGee